Diman skaters cruise past Nantucket

Wednesday

Jan 29, 2014 at 11:14 PMJan 29, 2014 at 11:17 PM

If Diman's offense had shown up any earlier, the Zamboni would have still been on the ice. The Bengals found the net three times in the first minute of Wednesday night's contest and that's all it really took, as Diman blanked Mayflower hockey rival Nantucket, 5-0 at Driscoll Arena

Connor BerubeCorrespondent

If Diman's offense had shown up any earlier, the Zamboni would have still been on the ice.

The Bengals found the net three times in the first minute of Wednesday night's contest and that's all it really took, as Diman blanked Mayflower hockey rival Nantucket, 5-0 at Driscoll Arena.

Diman quickly built up a sizeable lead in the game's opening doors. Jason Silva ripped his shot by Whalers' goaltender Peter Bopp just 15 seconds in. Bret Jardin grabbed the Bengals' second tally at 14:27 after redirecting the puck on a blocked scoring attempt and Mike Lavoie slapped a laser between Nantucket's pipes at 14:00, making it 3-0 in favor of Diman.

The Bengals grabbed goal No. 4 with 10:05 left in the first, courtesy of Cam Levesque. After the unpleasant wake-up call, Bopp settled in nicely and winded up stopping Diman's next 32 shots. He finished with 42 saves total.

The Bengals maintained their 4-0 lead heading into the third.

"When you play teams like this, it's important to go out there and get off to a fast start," Diman coach Kevin St. Laurent said. "Once (Nantucket) got into an initial rush, they made it into a game. They're a decent team. We played them up there, and only beat them, 6-3."

Silva capped Diman's scoring when he picked up his second goal with 13:20 left in the game.

The Whalers got more physical as the night went on. With 6:01 left, it was taken too far when Nantucket's John Balling hit Tyler Nester's head hard against the boards. Nester (who assisted his team's second score) left the game and Balling was ejected for game misconduct. Nantucket racked up eight penalties, half of which came in the final period.

"There was no need for that check near the end," St. Laurent said. "Those boards have no give. If the refs call the little things, stuff like that won't happen. I'm still working with my guys on that. They're doing better."

The Bengals took 47 shots on net altogether and goaltender Zack Cabral stopped all 20 of Nantucket's scoring chances to earn the shutout.

Diman extends their winning streak to five games and improve to 11-2-1 overall.

"We're playing really well right now," said St. Laurent. "We're coming together. We've still got some work to do, but the kids are really buying into the system that we're trying to implement. It's working and now we're trying to take that to the next level."